September 2014– AFRICA – Military teams should be sent to west Africa immediately if there is to be any hope of controlling the Ebola epidemic, doctors on the frontline told the United Nations on Tuesday, painting a stark picture of health workers dying, patients left without care and infectious bodies lying in the streets. The international president of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), Dr. Joanne Liu, told member states that although alarm bells had been ringing for six months, the response had been too little, too late and no amount of vaccinations and new drugs would be able to prevent the escalating disaster. “In west Africa, cases and deaths continue to surge,” she said. “Riots are breaking out. Isolation centers are overwhelmed. Health workers on the frontline are becoming infected and are dying in shocking numbers. Others have fled in fear, leaving people without care for even the most common illnesses. Entire health systems have crumbled.” She said Ebola treatment centers had been reduced to places where people went to die alone. “It is impossible to keep up with the sheer number of infected people pouring into facilities. In Sierra Leone, infectious bodies are rotting in the streets,” she said. “Rather than building new Ebola care centers in Liberia, we are forced to build crematoria.” The World Health Organization estimated last week that 20,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have been infected over three months. Médecins sans Frontières has doubled its staff of volunteer doctors in the region but is unable to cope.

The epidemic can be stopped, said Liu, but only if governments send in biohazard teams and equipment. “Many of the member states represented here today have invested heavily in biological threat response,” she said at the UN. “You have a political and humanitarian responsibility to immediately utilize these capabilities in Ebola-affected countries. To curb the epidemic, it is imperative that states immediately deploy civilian and military assets with expertise in biohazard containment. I call upon you to dispatch your disaster response teams, backed by the full weight of your logistical capabilities. This should be done in close collaboration with the affected countries. Without this deployment, we will never get the epidemic under control.” Money is no longer the main issue, according to MSF, and voluntary help is not enough. Skilled and well equipped teams are needed on the ground. Governments should send in military and civilian experts who can increase the number of isolation centers and deploy mobile laboratories that can be used to diagnose more cases. Military-style operations are required to establish dedicated air bridges to move personnel and equipment around West Africa and a regional network of field hospitals must be built to treat medical staff who are infected or suspected of being infected. About a tenth of the deaths have been among health workers. We must also address the collapse of state infrastructure,” Liu said. “The health system in Liberia has collapsed. Pregnant women experiencing complications have nowhere to turn. Malaria and diarrhea, easily preventable and treatable diseases, are killing people. Hospitals need to be reopened and newly created.”

Lastly, she said, there must be a change of approach by affected countries. “Coercive measures, such as laws criminalizing the failure to report suspected cases, and forced quarantines, are driving people underground. This is leading to the concealment of cases, and is pushing the sick away from health systems. These measures have only served to breed fear and unrest, rather than contain the virus.” Liu was speaking as nurses in Liberia went on strike for better pay and equipment to protect themselves from Ebola. John Tugbeh, spokesman for the strikers at John F Kennedy hospital in Monrovia, said the nurses would not return to work until they are supplied with “personal protective equipment (PPEs),” the clothing that guards against infectious diseases. “From the beginning of the Ebola outbreak we have not had any protective equipment to work with. As a result, so many doctors got infected by the virus. We have to stay home until we get the PPEs,” he said. The surgical section at John F. Kennedy hospital is the only trauma referral centre in Liberia. The hospital closed temporarily in July owing to the infections and deaths of an unspecified number of health workers who had been treating Ebola patients. “We need proper equipment to work with [and] we need better pay because we are going to risk our lives,” Tugbeh said. The UN has also warned of serious food shortages as a result of restrictions on movement in the Ebola-hit countries. “Access to food has become a pressing concern for many people in the three affected countries and their neighbors,” said Bukar Tijani, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation regional representative for Africa.

“With the main harvest now at risk and trade and movements of goods severely restricted, food insecurity is poised to intensify in the weeks and months to come.” A UK Government spokesman said: “Britain is working with agencies like the World Health Organization and Médecins Sans Frontières to prevent the spread of this deadly disease. A wide range of further options are under discussion to contain this outbreak.” Dr Paul Cosford, director of health protection at Public Health England, said: “We will continue to offer every support to the international efforts to contain and manage the Ebola outbreak led by the World Health Organization, working closely with government colleagues, and partners including MSF and UNICEF.” –Guardian

13 Responses to Ebola outbreak: call to send in military to West Africa to help curb epidemic – outbreak morphing into a nightmare

If the WHO is pulling all their help out why should we send in our military? would we not be setting ourselves jup even more disaster? Even Dr.s and Nurses are getting infected why would you send in inexperienced military personnel in? Don’t try to sey they have all been trained, that’s bull and you know it!

‘Disease modelers project a rapidly rising toll from Ebola’:
“Alessandro Vespignani hopes that his latest work will turn out to be wrong. In July, the physicist from Northeastern University in Boston started modeling how the deadly Ebola virus may spread in West Africa. Extrapolating existing trends, the number of the sick and dying mounts rapidly from the current toll—more than 3000 cases and 1500 deaths—to about 10,000 cases by 24 September, and hundreds of thousands in the months after that. “The numbers are really scary,” he says—although he stresses that the model assumes control efforts aren’t stepped up. “We all hope to see this NOT happening,” Vespigani writes in an e-mail…
If the disease keeps spreading as it has, most of the modelers Science talked to say WHO’s estimate will turn out to be conservative. “If the epidemic in Liberia were to continue in this way until the 1st of December, the cumulative number of cases would exceed 100,000,” Althaus predicts… ”
full story http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/08/disease-modelers-project-rapidly-rising-toll-ebola

Well I don’t know about every one else on here, comments and opinions are few it would seem, but with everything else going on in the world it would appear ‘End Times’ prophecies are being fulfilled. Especially as no one can do anything to stop their progress.
As for me, having fled to the hills seventeen years ago in anticipation of this day, the world events suddenly upon us are a wake up call. I just hope I’m prepared for what’s coming.

Nobody’s prepared no matter how much you try. I thought I was prepared and am still preparing wondering if I’m just wasting my money. Gotta spend it on something can’t eat money or gold and there won’t be anything to buy after the sh.. hits the fan. No one will be left to make it

I feel the same Jim, thought I was prepared in 2011 when winter snow and freezing temperatures suddenly descended upon us and we were cut off for six weeks. My like minded survivalist neighbour with his 4×4 got snowed in on day one whilst visiting his parents place thirty miles away and we were then home alone. ‘Cabin Fever’ soon set in and you soon realise that you haven’t catered for all your needs. Not to mention getting through the deep snow to your frozen log and coal bunkers or emptying the hot ashes!
I bought a small s/h 4×4 last November as an emergency escape pod, just in case and we had a mild winter. But with the unpredictable climate as it is I can’t be sure this year will be the same. Though the way I look at it, if I’m snowed in and cut off when everything goes to pot, nobody’s going to give me the plague, loot and pillage or trudge through deep snow in freezing temperatures to lop my head off! Though I might freeze to death, which ain’t a bad way to go, so I’m told, you just go to sleep.

Africa has troops and men who defend their people. Why couldn’t Africa take care of this? Our boys have been put in harms way, unnecessarily. This is the craziest move I’ve seen yet! These men have families at home. There is not one country on the face of the earth, that would send their military into a plague ridden land. And that’s what this is. Air drops of medical supplies, would be sufficient to help these poor people. May God have mercy on Africa.

No one else should be sent in! Sorry but it needs to be contained to just Africa! Do not send our troops! That’s a sure death sentence!!! I saw them just burying bodies…they should be burning them! And some guy was standing outside with no mask on while they are burying the bodies…how stupid can you be????